


Rollercoaster Ride to Nowhere

by chickentine



Series: Meryl/Charlie Spinoffs [1]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Inspired by Grey's Anatomy, redux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 06:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3239675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickentine/pseuds/chickentine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She was stalling, she knew – but after more than five years of silence and suppression, would another five minutes hurt?" </p><p>Because releasing words don't always lead to resolution. A Meryl/Charlie x Grey’s Anatomy redux, in which one scene in Grey’s Anatomy greatly inspires a Meryl/Charlie one-shot drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rollercoaster Ride to Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> I loved this one scene in Grey's Anatomy season 8 episode 22, where Lexie talks to Mark about how much she just loves him. I love the whole scene - I love the candor, the way she just tells him, his shocked stare - everything. 
> 
> Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a240QnBxzv8 (It’s only two minutes!) 
> 
> Context you may not need to read: 
> 
> This is in season 8, they got together in season 5 but in typical TV-land fashion, they broke up, got together again, broke up again. In the episodes prior to this, Mark found himself in another serious relationship (but he keeps on saying that he’s still in love with Lexie) and Lexie decides to just tell him. The girl in the end is Julia, his girlfriend. 
> 
> So this is a Meryl/Charlie fic that’s set according to that scene. It’s NOT AU and they are still very much the same figure skaters we know and love.

Meryl fumbled with the buttons of her bright red coat, frowned at a stray piece of thread, and smoothed the fabric down absently.

She was stalling, she knew – but after more than five years of silence and suppression, would another five minutes hurt?

Shaking herself, she took a deep breath and strode out as normally as she could, with a forced confidence tinged by a sense of desperation. She had to do this. She had been waiting for this moment, had been despairing for weeks at the thousands of opportunities she let go of and the thousands of opportunities she never had. She had no idea how the yearning to tell him began or how she realized, but she knew, she just  _knew_ that she had to tell him.

Charlie was leaning against a low wall and Meryl’s stride halted temporarily. She could see Charlie’s side profile, his golden curls at their perfect length and his aquiline nose lit and highlighted by the harsh fluorescent lights from the foyer and the pale moonlight. He looked good, picture-perfect, better than he had all spring and summer and Meryl couldn’t help but stare for a second before she gathered her wits and walked towards him.

“Oh,” she tried to sound nonchalant, as if she did not expect to find him there. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Charlie said with a smile, eyes not drifting from his phone.

“Thanks, uh,” Meryl said with a nervous quickness. Charlie looked up at her. “For today. It – it was a great training and – ”

“We did a good job in there,” Charlie said kindly, bemusedly.

“Thanks,” Meryl said again, unable to keep the trepidation out of her voice.

Turning to her in concern, Charlie stuffed his phone unceremoniously in his pocket.

“You okay?”

“ _I love you,_ ” Meryl blurted out. She gave a gasp of surprise at her own bluntness, the natural ease with which the words came, and Charlie’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“Oh,  _god,_ ” Meryl rushed. “Oh my  _god._ That just came fly – flying out of my  _face_ like it was just some kind of –  _I love you._ ”

Charlie’s face was still frozen in shock and Meryl couldn’t bring herself to look at him. But there was a sort of dam that broke inside Meryl and she couldn’t stop the ocean of words that came rushing out.

“I – I did it again. I – I love you. I  _do._ I just,” she was looking at him in the eyes now, her words stumbling but gaining volume, blood rushing through her face, heart pumping wildly. “I love you. And I have been trying not to say it and I have been trying  _so_ hard to just mash it down and ignore it and not say it and Fedor is a  _great guy._ He  _is,_ he’s gorgeous and he’s young and he doesn’t have a girlfriend and he’s a figure skater and – and he  _liked_ me, you know? He  _really_ liked me.”

She knew she was saying far too much and far too soon, but there was no stopping, not now, not after everything.

“But it was never going to work out because I – I love you,” she was becoming aware that she was sounding a little desperate, a little repetitive, but she was too far gone. “I am  _so_ in love with you. And you’re – you’re in me. It’s like you’re a disease. It’s like I’m  _infected_ by Charlie White.”

She giggled at herself, at her silly similes, and tried looking away from Charlie and his widened eyes and his shock and the look on his face she couldn’t decipher.

“And – and I just  _can’t._ I can’t think about anything or anybody.  And I can’t sleep.” Her voice was breaking now, cracking on the edges of her words, halting and drowning in the truth of it – the truth she never told herself or anyone else but was now telling Charlie.  _Charlie._

“And I love you. I  _just – I love you all the time, just every minute of everyday._ And I – I love you.”

She paused to revel in an immensely unexpected rush of relief.

 “I feel so much better,” she said with a desperate, choking giggle. “It’s just – I  _love you._ ”

Meryl had no idea what to expect, but she  _hoped._ She hoped that Charlie would  _say something_ after that unceremonious way she bared her soul. It wasn’t the first time she told him she loved him – far from it – but it was the first time it meant  _so much_ to her, that it meant the world to her and more that he  _had_ to know how she felt, how much she couldn’t imagine life without him by her side, how much she had irrevocably, inconceivably fallen in love with her after more than seventeen years of constant togetherness.

“Charlie?”

Charlie opened his mouth and Meryl felt like she was at the very peak of a roller coaster, in the precious half-second before the drop, the half-second where everything becomes unbearable in its tension, in knowing that all had been said and done, that it was too late, that all that was left was to face the perilous drop. This would end her or make her and she just wanted to close her eyes and take whatever he would have to say and deal with it.  _Why was it taking him so long to –_

“Hey, Meryl!”

It was Tanith. Meryl closed her eyes in a half-second of disbelief, torn between an unbelievably overwhelming sense of relief and the drowning sensation of disappointment.

“Thought you said the lobby, Charlie,” Tanith went on cheerily. “You ready?”

Charlie’s mouth was still partly agape, his eyes drilled on Meryl in the same unfathomable look. Swallowing, Meryl cleared her throat and dragged her eyes to look at Tanith, who was staring at Charlie expectantly.

Seemingly coming to his senses, Charlie shook himself and turned to his girlfriend.

“Yes, Tanith I was just uh – ”

Meryl sensed –  _knew –_ that Charlie was scrabbling for words, torn between letting Meryl go with _any_ acknowledgement and easing himself out of the situation.

In what was both an act of pity and absolution, Meryl interrupted as clearly and cheerfully as she could.

“So,” she said, stuffing her hands in her pockets and slowly stepping away. “I was just telling Charlie here about how great it’s been to have us all rehearse together. Really. So um, I have to go now – I’ll catch you tomorrow! Enjoy your night!”

Tanith grinned at her. “Thanks, Meryl! See you!”

“Bye, Mer,” Charlie said weakly.

Meryl waved and turned away to walk to her car in the unexpectedly freezing October night. Her heart was in a strange place. There was the unbearable weight of confusion, of a rejection that wasn’t quite a rejection. But there was the equally difficult lightness of relief – she had said all that she had to say. She had done her part, spoken what her heart longed to say for so long.

Only, as her face crumpled and her heart drowned her in tears,  _why_ was it that everything just _hurt_? 


End file.
